Shared value of Western countries is to protect their privileged position: China Daily editorial

The sanctions the European Union imposed on Chinese individuals and an entity on Monday, over so-called human rights issues in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, on which the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada followed suit, was clearly a coordinated action.

Local residents in Kuqa, China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, pose for pictures in a peach orchard, Feb 24, 2021. (Photo/People's Daily Online)

It has led to some speculation that US President Biden is succeeding in his stated desire to create a coalition "of like-minded partners" to make common cause against China in defense of shared interests and shared values.

Yet given the rhetoric of those involved over the past few years, it is not surprising that they are acting in concert on an issue on which they feel they can safely share a soapbox without treading on one another's toes.

Their act of political arrogance is based on lies and driven by politics. It is exactly what the China-sponsored resolution the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted on Tuesday opposes.

Advocating dialogue and cooperation on human rights based on impartiality and non-politicization, the resolution is a clarion call for an end to the Western countries' clamor on so-called human rights issues.

What China and other members of the international community who uphold the United Nations-centered international system endorse is international relations based on equality and mutual respect, not servility to the West's neo-imperialist diktats.

For the West, human rights are nothing but a pretense for acts that trample on the basic norms of international relations to serve their narrow ends. The rest of the world has learned that whenever the West starts preaching on human rights it is a case of beware Greeks bearing gifts.

It is under the banner of human rights that the United States and its allies have left a trail of destruction and endless humanitarian crises across the world with their meddling in the internal affairs of other countries under the guise of upholding human rights. And their internal situations, as outlined in a report released Wednesday on human rights violations in the US, do not bear close scrutiny.

And that is only in the postwar period. If one looks further back, there are the stains of the genocide of native peoples, slavery and the abuses of their colonialism on the human rights banners they are so eager to hold aloft.

Collecting chicken feathers to make a duster does not alter the lightness of each of the feathers, or make the duster a judge's gavel either. Repeating lies does not change the fact they are lies. China has made steady progress on human rights and it will do better. Development and the realization of human rights are mutually reinforcing.

More than 1,200 diplomats, reporters and religious figures from over 100 countries and regions have visited Xinjiang in recent years, amid the West's allegations of "industrial-scale" "genocide" and "sterilization". Yet what they have found is a peaceful place where people of dozens of ethnic groups and different religions live together harmoniously.

The Western countries like to talk of shared values and imply these are universal values, but while claiming to speak for everyone, the only value they share is maintaining the interests and privileges of a few.